Chico school bond-funded projects won't start quickly

CHICO -- When Maureen Fitzgerald, assistant Chico Unified School District superintendent for business, went to sleep Tuesday night, she was fearful the economic sky was falling as far as Chico education was concerned.

When she awakened at 4:30 a.m. Wednesday and checked local and state elections results, she sent email messages to other CUSD administrators that read, "Doomsday has come and gone."

The reason for both her depression and later elation were the statewide passage of Proposition 30 and the local success of the CUSD bond Measure E.

Proposition 30, a tax measure authored by Gov. Jerry Brown, does not add a single dollar to California school budgets at any level, but the governor had promised massive cuts to education if it failed.

The proposition, though running behind in the early tallies Tuesday night, ended with 4,959,206 yes votes to 4,241,246 nays.

Measure E would allow CUSD to issue up to $78 million in bonds for construction and infrastructure improvements to the schools.

Unlike Proposition 30 that needed a simple majority, Measure E had to win with a minimum 55 percent positive vote.

Although there are still about 14,000 ballots to be counted in Butte County, Measure E has 20,155 positive votes and 11,677 negatives. That's 63.3 percent of the vote — well above the statutory requirement.

Fitzgerald said, when she first saw the numbers, "I sent Kelly (Staley, CUSD superintendent) and Bob (Feaster, assistant CUSD superintendent for human resources) and everybody an email at about 4:30 this morning," to announce the good news.

Despite her nocturnal worries, Fitzgerald said she was "pretty confident" that Measure E would pass.

She said as of Wednesday everybody was eager to move ahead with projects, but that isn't going to happen quickly.

The first step will be for the district's principals to consult with faculty, staff, students and parents' groups to come up with a prioritized list of projects on their campuses.

At the same time, the district board of trustees must create a citizen review committee to oversee how bond dollars are spent.

Fitzgerald said the district wants a really "rich, divergent" committee made up of district administrators, students, staff, teachers, parents and members of the community.

The CUSD trustees will look at the various proposals and then select the projects to fund.

She explained projects that involve building construction or major modifications will have to go to the Office of the State Architect for review and approval before they can go forward.

Improved technology was specifically listed as one of the uses for bond money. Fitzgerald said that kind of project that doesn't involving moving walls could happen more speedily.

Staff writer Roger H. Aylworth can be reached at 896-7762, raylworth@chicoer.com, or on Twitter @RogerAylworth.